Michael Flanders - Life and Career

Life and Career

Michael Flanders was born in London on 1 March 1922. The son of an actor and a professional violinist, Flanders' ambition from an early age was to work in the theatre. He attended Westminster School (where he first met Donald Swann) and read History at Christ Church, Oxford from 1940.

While at Oxford, Flanders started work as a professional actor, but then left Oxford to join the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve. The ship on which he was serving, HMS Marne, was torpedoed off the coast of Africa, west of Gibraltar, in November 1942. Flanders survived the attack. Later he was promoted to sub-lieutenant but contracted poliomyelitis at sea, and from 1943 onwards was a wheelchair user.

After recovering, he lived with his family in the Hampstead Garden Suburb, where he directed and produced plays, with a local amateur theatre group, the Play and Pageant Union. Unable to return to Christ Church to continue his studies, he found work as a radio broadcaster. A chance meeting with Swann in 1948 led to the start of their professional partnership. They began writing songs for West-End producer Laurier Lister, Swann writing the music and Flanders writing the words. Their songs were performed by artists such as Ian Wallace and Joyce Grenfell. They subsequently wrote two two-man revues, At The Drop Of A Hat and At The Drop of Another Hat, which they performed all over the world until their partnership ended in 1967.

Their more famous songs included "The Hippopotamus" ("Mud, mud, glorious mud") and "First and Second Law", in which they put to music the laws of thermodynamics. One of their most enduring numbers is the ever-so-mildly risqué "Have Some Madeira, M'Dear". Their songs celebrated transportation ("Slow Train", "The Last Tram", "A Transport of Delight," the last-named a tribute to the London double-decker bus), animal life ("The Wart-Hog", "The Gnu", "The Elephant", and many others), common inconveniences in "The Gas-Man Cometh", "Motor Perpetuo" (about parking a car), "Song of Reproduction" (about hi-fidelity records), and even classical music, with an irreverent "Guide to Britten" and a setting of lyrics by Flanders to the finale of Mozart's Horn Concerto No. 4 ("Ill Wind"). Some of his songs were also political commentary, such as "20 Tons Of TNT" and "The War Of 14–18" (a translation of Georges Brassens' "La guerre").

Outside his partnership with Swann, Flanders was a versatile librettist, actor and broadcaster. He wrote the words for comic operas such as Three's Company and Christmas Story, and a children's cantata Captain Noah and his Floating Zoo. He appeared on stage in The Soldier's Tale and Ten Years Hard, and in two films, Doctor in Distress (1963) and The Raging Moon (1971). He also made many appearances on radio and television, and received an OBE in 1964.

His narration for Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf remained a staple of EMI's classical output for many years. Within the last few months of his life he also provided English-language narration and voicework for the French export children's animation Barbapapa.

Flanders died suddenly of a ruptured intracranial berry aneurysm on 14 April 1975 while on holiday at Betws-y-Coed, Wales. He was survived by his wife Claudia Cockburn (daughter of journalist Claud Cockburn and Hope Hale Davis), whom he had married in 1959, and their daughters Laura and Stephanie.

Flanders' ashes were scattered in the grounds of Chiswick House in west-central London, a place where he very often liked to sit in the afternoon during the final years of his life.

On 30 June 2007, a documentary about Flanders and his work, presented by his daughter Stephanie Flanders, aired on BBC Radio 4's The Archive Hour, called Flanders on Flanders.